Alex Faraway And The Ghosts Of Mars: Alex Faraway, #2

By G.F. Brynn

'Alex Faraway And The Ghosts Of Mars' refuels the events of 'The Last Martian' with the Insect-Bot "Others" and their enslaved human henchmen now hunting for Alex Faraway in earnest. The inventive boy from Delta-Town is growing, both in knowledge but also power, for Alex is has a little of something strange in his DNA, and an alien radiation has triggered that unnatural something deep inside him at last. Dreams of an ancient people on the small, red planet are now sharper, even lucid, and with them, the ominous history of Mars and Planet X - the swiftly approaching rogue world under glass. The Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, harbour a threat as yet unknown to Earthers, for the cunning Others are fully awake and have invasion of both worlds in mind. And overarching, encompassing all are the Glass Tunnels of the mysterious, immortal Nethlins. And those who control the Glass Tunnels, control the cosmos for good or evil ends. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep Sky Stories
• Release date: Nov 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393327141

G.F. Brynn

G.F. Brynn saw the Apollo moon missions as a kid and was enthralled by the limitless possibilities of space travel, robotics and invention. He grew up reading exciting science-fiction by Arther C. Clarke, Isaac  Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs and the like where unique worlds and beings were written into weird, society-changing stories like ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ at one end of the spectrum as well as fast-paced adventure like the ‘John Carter, Warlord of Mars‘ at the other.  He also liked to tinker for hours on end and build unique mechanical models and robots which fired his imagination to no end. He dreamt of creating all manner of extravagant machines and inventions of his own one day. His later college years involved learning electrical theory, heavy duty mechanics and hydraulics.  He learned to fly small aircraft and as well, and so, what he gained from those many and varied experiences are concepts that could be drawn directly from when writing about the spaceships, inventions and robots in this youthful space-adventure series. G.F. lives in Canada with his wife and little dog, and has two grown kids who are off and away following their own worthy life-paths now, thankfully.

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Copyright © 2014 – 2024-**.  Written and Illustrated by Gerald Brynelson - (G. F. Brynn)

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Created and Printed in Canada by Deep Sky Stories & Illustrations.

First Printing, 2018

Series Title Change From {Alex The Inventor} to

{Alex Faraway}:  2024.02.25

Deep Sky Stories Inc. ©

www.deepskystories.com

For Carolyn, who has my undying love and affection,

Ryan and Jessica, who, as crazy youngsters, inspired me to start writing again.

And, a special thanks to my mom who taught me to never give up.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1.  Of Lineage and Tokens of Manhood

Chapter 2.  The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Chapter 3.  A Recurring Dream

Chapter 4.  Probably Wasn’t A Good Idea

Chapter 5.  A Distant Voice

Chapter 6.  A Luss Song and a Weird Souvenir

Chapter 7.  The Song is the Beacon

Chapter 8.  A Lazy Morning for a Change

Chapter 9.  Strange Change and Weird Doctor

Chapter 10.  A Vital Dream-Vision

Chapter 11.  The Enemy Gathers

Chapter 12.  Elliot and Cash and Parallax

Chapter 13.  Clearly Something Different About the Boy

Chapter 14.  Finders Keepers and a Simple Plan

Chapter 15.  Revelations From the Map

Chapter 16.  Stepping into the Crystals

Chapter 17.  Wake Echoes and DNA in the Dream

Chapter 18.  Pig-Iron Skin

Chapter 19.  Final Transformation

Chapter 20.  Supersonic Dragonfly and a Ghostly Guide

Chapter 21.  The Compass Coin and Old Elliot’s Idea

Chapter 22.  Conduit World and the Key to the Cosmos

Chapter 23.  Circle Closed and the Arrow Forward

Epilogue

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Blueprints – Alex’s Gyro-Jet

Definitions of unique symbols in the story:

((…words here…)):  Words spoken telepathically.

<<…words here…>>:  Words spoken by a robot.

In seekingstrange places and people, one invites power and wisdom into one’s life.

- G. F. Brynn

Bk

Chapter 1.  Of Lineage and Tokens of Manhood

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    When the boy and his large companion arrived on what became their new Homeworld, they had to learn to survive and adapt to the new environment as best as they could. The boy was fit and hardy though and he had the good sense to pack what provisions he thought were necessary before he began his lone journey from one planet to the other. He first saw his new Homeworld from afar only a year before - that being two of our years. His father, King T’eir of the Valley's southwest shore, had taken him to the highest tower of his palace on a dark, clear night and pointed up at the tiny blue dot nestled among the stars. It did not appear to be very interesting to the boy at first - it was just a pale blue speck in the darkness and looked too distant as well. Yet his father told him that this dot in the night sky was a very interesting place indeed. This blue dot was actually nearer to their Homeworld than even the brightest of the stars which turned in the black velvet dome high overhead. How could that be, the boy wondered. It was only a little blue dot in space. There was no other place which could possibly match the beauty and wonders of the boy's own Homeworld. The valley he lived in was a full, rich and wild country all by itself. It was the envy of the Plains People who dwelled and roamed the cold and dusty steppes beyond his home. In the Valley there were thick, lush wilderness forests and orchard trees which were laden with fruits of all kinds. Rich and bountiful farmland stretched for hundreds of miles along the banks of the mighty River Styx. Then there were the Strand Villages which were clusters of huts that stood upon tall, erosion-carved sandstone pillars. The pillars were situated throughout the entire length of the endless river valley. The Valley did seem to be endless, so far did it stretch from East to West, from horizon to horizon. The village pillars all stood a full two miles above the thundering river. A boy, such as he, could run and explore from village to village for weeks on end because each was inter-connected, one to the other by long rope suspension bridges. A boy could meet new and interesting people all along the way and would never go hungry because the food and bounty from the valley floor was shared freely among the villagers. No, there was nothing, the boy was sure, which could possibly compare with the splendor of his Homeworld. True, there were a few worrying signs of troubles ahead which the boy often heard his Royal parents discussing with various diplomats and High-War Moderators during evening meetings.

The meetings had something to do with accidents involving the Moon-War machines which were somehow reaching the surface of his world and causing serious problems, even fatalities at times. But Halden, the son of King T’eir was not afraid of such problems as these. His father would make short work of those nasty little robot Flies, he was sure. No, there was no world as wonderful nor any people as powerful as his race, that was certain.

     Come, look upon the yonder distant Water-World through the lens of my Aetherglass, Halden's father said as they stood together atop the tower of the Royal Palace that cold, clear summer night. When he did look, Halden was astounded to see the blue dot in an entirely closer and different perspective. Halden was bundled up in his warmest buckskin, fur coat and leggings. Only his head was left uncovered so that his dark brown hair-quills could move freely about, scrubbing out the oxygen molecules from the thin Martian atmosphere. Stepping up to the Aetherglass, he saw a slowly turning gem of a world lying just beneath a scant blanket of curling, restless clouds. Within the curve of the planet's night-shadow, Halden saw the brilliant flashes and sparks of violent thunderstorms as they crashed across a huge expanse of deep blue ocean. White froth from thundering waves outlined the crooked dividing line where brown and green continental shores met the waters and slowly fell into them over millennia. Once or twice as Halden scanned even further down upon that strange new world, he thought he saw huge living beings splashing up out of the deep blue seas and blowing strong, white mist from out of their heads. Then, along the tops of the highest snow-capped mountains could also be seen other moving, walking beings who ran and leaped nimbly from peak to peak with agile grace. Sometimes, they even could be seen crashing their curved horns against one another in violent, exciting battles. Halden, the Royal Prince was at once enthralled and taken away by all these living wonders and each night he pestered his father to turn his Aetherglass toward that alien planet once again. He soon knew so much about, the Blue Water-World that Halden told his father that he wished he could journey to it so he could explore and truly experience all there was to see there.

    Do you think there are people like us on the Blue Water-World, father, he asked one night after a

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particularly exciting few hours of watching that world with the small beings climbing the mountain tops and the larger ones swimming in the waters. For, at one point, Halden thought he also saw several small fires burning in the darkness of the planet's night-shadow as well. Was it only some trees burning from a chance lightning storm passing over them, or could they be fires which were deliberately set by intelligent hands? Fire was an extremely rare occurrence on his Homeworld because the air was very thin and so did not allow for fires unless they were taken from the hot lava which flowed from the crater of Mount Olympia.

    Nay, t'is a world that be too near the Centraorbal Flame, t'is too hot for ones such as us to live wi'out being baked alive, Hal'd, his father, the King replied. See there, lad, only the bein's who live in the cool of the seas or the cold of the high snows may hope to survive wi'in such heat. Nay, Hal'd, he finished with a proud and arrogant sweep of his thickly muscled arm, this be the only world within the domain of our Centraorbal Flame which may hope to sustain those such as us.   Tier's long, kingly mane of greying hair-quills shivered and flourished proudly in the thin atmosphere of Mars. As the king spoke, his young son hung on every evenly worded pronouncement. Halden was always in awe of his father's even-handed way of thinking through difficult problems of the State or of the individual, then solving each with fair and sensible words. Very rarely was there the need for a heavy hand of any sort and T’eir was always loathed to see the need for such violent acts. Still, there had been rumors of late - word of the possibility, no matter how remote, that there would come the need for military combat someday soon. For there were some in the Guild of High-War Moderators who did not believe that the kill-signals, which had been sent to the War Machines of the two moons years before, could have shut down all the Machines so easily. No, there was news of many unfamiliar lights sighted in the night sky that flashed by overhead much too swiftly. They were often seen moving back and forth between the moons as they passed each other and T’eir, who studied much of the astral realm, saw those curious sights as well. And they were becoming more and more frequent of late. Stranger still were the meteor clusters which fell from the heavens day and night. Then, soon after that, small hordes of Flies were sighted off on the distant eastern plains and contact with some of the nomadic people was lost. The king did not share such worrisome thoughts with his young son though and the spare time that he did spend with Halden was to enrich their bond as father and son as much as possible. For some reason he could feel in his gut, the king sensed that these precious moments he had with his wide-eyed young son would soon be lost. For, it was not only the War Machines that gave the king grave concerns, he also saw something else through the lens of his powerful Aetherglass. It was a shimmering, distant, icy smooth sphere which moved swiftly against the background of stars each night, and during each watchful night it grew larger and brighter before his eyes. Being a Royal, T’eir knew of the legend of the Great Change which must befall his Homeworld every five thousand Martian years. He also knew that if this dangerously closing planet was the bringer of the Great Change then the time of long winter and the Death-Sleep was nearly at hand. And so, T’eir came up with a plan, a trick actually which he knew would give his inventive-thinking boy something to occupy his ingenious young mind. It was something that Halden could build when T’eir could no longer spend the time with him that he wished to. What he built could also become his son's means to escape the two disasters which the King felt certain were soon to come. T’eir was a Warrior-King of the Fierwaii Clan and a leader among The Royals of The Valley and he had earned much respect from them as well as the common folk. However, he was a thinker and a planner as well who did not turn a blind eye away from the hard facts of a coming harsh reality. Only a fool would do so and would pay for his folly. Therefore, he faced the two dangers head-on and planned how to deal with the worst outcomes while giving his two children the best protection he could. One, his little Rainah he would keep close to home in the family palace while the other, his adventurous older one, Halden he gave a chance to spread his wings and escape to the one other place beyond his Homeworld that he longed to see: the Blue Water-World.

    ((Halden)), the king telepathed to his son not long afterward, ((come to the foot of the southern cliff which

receives the first rays of each summer morning, I have a mission of great importance for you to

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complete for me.)) Halden obeyed his father's cryptic summons and, mounting Spear, his gleaming Dragonfly Guardian, the mystified Martian boy flew swiftly to the valley wall that was mentioned. There, on the valley floor, Halden found his father as well as a curious assortment of people. One woman who was there, he knew to be his private tutor but the others were several men whom he occasionally saw discussing important matters with his parents. Halden landed gently on a carpet of creeping Groundvine, a short distance away and walked over to the small group of adults while Spear pranced daintily behind on long, thin insect legs, his powerful rainbow-coloured wings folded neatly back.

Halden, you are near to becoming a young man and a fine Royal Warrior, his father announced, that is why I have decided to entrust you with a most important and challenging endeavor. Come,  said, and without further explanation, he and the group of adults turned and started climbing some steep rock steps that had been carved into the cliff face ages ago. Halden followed, keeping up as best he could with the small entourage as they scaled upward. Presently, they came to a small plateau and there Halden saw the entrance to a cave. Inside they all walked and there, the boy saw a wondrous sight, for the cave was filled from the floor to the ceiling with all manner of tools, metal materials and mechanical devices. Then the story unfolded from his father, and it was a most enticing story, with a goal that he had set for his ingenious young prince to accomplish.

    Father...what is all this for, Halden asked as he gazed all about him with awe and delight.

    Halden, T’eir began, "I have finally decided to give you a Manhood Challenge which will be most difficult but which I also know that you will strive your utmost to fulfill. A Manhood Challenge, so that was it! Every boy of the Martian race was given his own special challenge to accomplish after they reached a certain age.

The challenge was often something which his parents both realized would befit whatever the boy was most keen on learning to do. Whether the Manhood Challenge was athletic or academic, it was a task which was often very difficult but which was still overcome more often than not.

     What-what is my challenge, Halden asked eagerly for he was at once impatient to be hard at the task, whatever it was, so he could earn his father's respect as a man. Halden couldn't wait to grow up.

    Come, to the plateau. There we will make a fire and wait till night-fall. Then you will know your challenge, the king finished. And there the father and his son and the small group of learned people lit a small Meditation Fire and sat down to wait. All was silent after that, with the unlikely group sitting together around the feebly guttering flame, deep in quiet meditation or simply sharing with one another their open honesty through telepathic waves.

    Dusk soon fell and the stars began appearing overhead. Then shining blue and clear among its silently winking companions appeared the Blue Water-World. Without further ceremony, T’eir the king simply pointed up to the dark velvet, twilightsky and said, There, that is your Manhood Challenge, Hal'd, you will build a ship, with the aid of these most learned people and with it, you will voyage to that distant world. Halden's mouth fell open and stayed that way for a full Martian minute, which is quite a long time when compared to ours. What was his father thinking? Was he mad? What would be the purpose behind such an impossible challenge? But, before Halden could think of his first words to say in protest, the king went further still. We were not being capricious regarding the challenge that your mother and I decided upon, nor do we take it lightly, Hal'd because there is also a reason behind our challenge for you. We wish for you to be a scout for our clan - nay, for all our people, T’eir said.  There has long been the need among our people to strive to climb free from the bonds of this Homeworld and branch away to new, uncharted places. It is true that our bravest fliers once gained footholds on nearby Phobos and Deimos, he added with a wave at each moon, but their purpose for that was merely to wage a regrettable High-War using creatures who should have remained here as peaceful laborers. Now, a time of serious change is upon us and we have need of your fresh and unique talent, Halden. Your mother and I have seen how you enjoy building and creating all manner of interesting machines since you were small, and now that you are older, I have seen how much you yearn to spread your wings and explore. So now, here in this secret place and with the help of some of the most well versed thinkers of our clan, you will seek to attain your journey. The Craft-Book of our clan does not describe a vessel such as the one that you must build but we will lend our knowledge and secrets when need be. It will be a dangerous journey, no doubt, Halden, but nothing beyond the safety of childhood is without risk. ((To achieve this voyage to the Blue Water-World, you will simply have to accept that there will be more risk – that is all)), T’eir finished with those gravely serious words from his mind. So began young Halden's journey into manhood and it was an arduous one to be sure. Yet once he set his mind to the goal and started working with the materials he had, one problem after the other, soon was solved. The designers and technicians who were supposed to assist Halden soon found that their help was only needed occasionally because the lad had such a sharp mind that he was able to quickly grasp the necessary teachings or skills and soon moved on to surpass even his tutors. Before long, a small, sturdy vessel began to take shape in the center of the cave and, with each passing day, Halden gained more and more certainty about how well all the pieces of the little spacecraft should fit into place.

There was, however, still one vital component to be added about which the boy simply had no clue. It was the propulsion system which would hopefully send the craft and him

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skyward when the navigational formulas were properly calculated. He knew what he needed but did not know where to find any of the elements of the engine he was thinking about building. Even the scholars with whom he consulted had no idea where such elements could be found or even if they existed. Finally, in desperation, Halden went to see his father. When Halden found the King, he noticed for the first time how much stress his father was under. T’eir was thinner than he had ever been before and his face was drawn and shadowed from constant concerns which Halden had no knowledge of. His father was seldom seen inside the palace anymore

because he was travelling constantly from one village to the next, from one end of the Valley to the other, to meet with the other Royals and Elders. Halden guessed though that all this extra work his father had to do was in response to attacks from the sky which were becoming more and more frequent. The War Machines had apparently survived the kill-signals which his people had used to try shutting them down several years before. Now the machines had found the means to descend from their moon bases and land on his Homeworld, to wreak havoc among the vulnerable villages of the lowland plains far to the East. It was even rumored that preparations were being made to defend against a possible full invasion by the High-War Machines now known as The Others. Those cold creatures which had been banished to the two moons, generations before, to do the bidding of their Masters below, were now returning with a vengeance beyond imagining. Everywhere there was a palpable tension in the air as practice battles among youthful Royals on their Dragonflies took place high above the valley floor. Food and provisions were taken into the Royal Palace walls to prepare for a possible siege while makeshift shelters for the common folk were built down on the valley floor, nearby the palace. His father was indeed a very overburdened man at the moment, but even so, when the king was informed that his son wished to speak with him, he dropped all else immediately to see him.

   What may I help you with, Hal'd, he asked quietly as the boy entered the throne-room which the king had ordered cleared only a few minutes before. After T’eir listened intently to Halden's problem regarding the propulsion system for his vessel, he said, "come, I will now show you what you will need, for I knew that you would require two last elements for your craft if you were able to complete it as far as you now have. The king led Halden down below the palace into the deepest and most secret of chambers. There he revealed to the boy that which he had not divulged to even his most educated scholars. For within a large clay box T’eir revealed a beautiful and delicate looking artifact to Halden; it was a glittering double-spiral of glass coils, one inside the other and tapered to a point three feet above the base which had the same diameter. The handcrafted coils were made of a strange glass which the king said their ancestors had brought back from a mysterious and faraway place. The coils were hollow and the glass itself held properties of great and unusual power. Even before they pushed back the heavy lid to the protective clay crypt containing the coils, they could sense the vibrant energy emanating from the glass artefact. The crypt stood in the center of the

underground chamber and carved out of the ceiling, above the coils was a wide, round opening which ascended high up into darkness. T’eir then led Halden into an adjacent chamber where he slowly withdrew a measured quantity of a strange, vaporous liquid from a subterranean reservoir. Contact with the Martian atmosphere soon caused a chemical reaction that created more vapor as the liquid quickly evaporated. These two unlikely elements, one a glass artifact taken from an unknown, faraway world and the other, a reactive, liquefied gas from beneath the ground of Mars would, when combined, cause time itself to blur away from anything which one would consider normal space-time. I do not know the why of all the alchemy which is unlocked by the combining of these two stranger elements, Halden, the king said, but what I do know is that our fore-bearers guessed or imagined the unthinkable when they brought one together with the other. And as he said those words, T’eir carefully ladled a small droplet of the burbling, vaporous liquid into the opening of one of the two spiraling glass coils. Stand back, he ordered as, immediately, there arose from the coils a sparking, frizzing light-cloud of blurred, dimensionally imbalanced and state-shifted Time. Within the boundaries of that small cloud, Time lost a very small amount of density or relevance

compared to the 3-Dimensional space to which it was normally bound. The result was an unnatural and dangerous imbalance or shifting of Time away from normal Space. Therefore if the natural order was to be returned or reset for the Time Dimension within the Time-Fizz Cloud, then the alien-made glass coils would need to move a corresponding distance through Space to compensate for that Time Imbalance. A small, spinning circular torus of pure energy suddenly materialized and with a crackling bang and a blinding flash of light, the clay box containing the alien glass coils shot straight up the large chimney-hole in the ceiling and disappeared. Halden stared up after it, dumbfounded and amazed by what seemed to be pure magic. The sight and sound of the Dimensional Imbalance Virtual Engine being activated caused him to jump back several more steps as well.

    Where did it go, he finally asked in a small, scared voice.

    Why up to the throne-room above us of course, his father said with a slight twinkle of mischief in his deep blue eyes. Come Hal'd, there is yet more to see and learn. The king then showed Halden the third secret chamber below the throne-room and it was also the largest and most valuable one of all. For it was a Chamber of Knowledge and each of its four stone walls was written over with ancient carved symbols and prophetic pictures. The entire length of one of the walls was devoted to a large, intricately carved map of the Valley as well. King T’eir and Prince Halden spent the remainder of the day in that last chamber as the king sought to teach his son the solemn importance of the vital information on each wall. The entire alphabet of their language was carved on the first wall, as well as the most important root-words which the rest were built upon. Halden knew all these letters and words, of course, yet for some reason, the king wished to impress upon his son each and every small detail of that chamber. Only after you have remembered all there is to know within this room will I then permit you to complete your ship and journey to the Blue Water-World, Hal'd, said T’eir, for this be all the foundational knowledge of our Homeworld and when I am no more, you must be able to pass it on to your children and all those who come after. Do you understand, Hal'd? The boy looked up at his father with different eyes then and he noticed for the first time how very old the king was becoming. A pang of sadness caused him to look quickly away for fear that his thoughts would become known to the tall, proud man.

     Yes, father, he said. Halden plunged right away into the task before him and devoted every minute of that day to absorbing and memorizing every detail of the Chamber of Knowledge. The Language Wall, which was the easiest of the four to read, did not take very long to study and retain. Next, there was a smaller wall at the far end of the room which was divided down the middle into two separately engraved pictures by a single straight line. This is the Wall of Chaos, T’eir said quietly. There were no words to describe each ancient picture because none were needed. Halden could clearly understand that each contained his Homeworld and its two moons. On each picture as well was drawn a fiery ball representing the Centraorbal Flame and around each ball of flame was a perfectly carved circle indicating the orbit of Mars around it. After those similarities though, the two pictures were drastically different from one another. The first picture showed Halden his Homeworld as it was now and its orbit was as it should be, but the second engraving contained what appeared to be many mistakes in the drawing. The first mistake was the extra, much larger planet which cut downward across the orbit of Halden's world like a falling hammer. It was drawn so close to his Homeworld that there was barely any space between the two carved planets.

The second mistake was just as glaring because the orbital circle of Mars was now slightly off-center from the Centraorbal Flame. The implied cause of this wrong orbit was obvious at first glance: The sudden appearance of the dangerously close alien world and the massive upheaval, the chaos that it brought with it. Then, just below the second picture, were four small rectangular shapes which Halden hadn't noticed before.

    What are those, he asked his father. The king seemed not to hear him but Halden noticed a shadow of dread fall briefly over his father's face. T’eir quickly regained his composure though because he then proceeded to teach Halden about the Great Change which would come to their Homeworld every five thousand of their years.

    This is as we are now, he said, indicating the normal picture, and this is what shall befall us again…someday. The king took care to sound matter-of-fact and to betray no signs of the dreadful worry which the second picture brought him. Let the boy know of it but let him think of the threat as a far-off one of many life-times yet to come. Come now to The Map of the Royals, he said evenly as he guided Halden to the other larger wall which stood across from the Language Wall. Come sit with me, Hal'd for this wall holds the Map of the Royals and must be more than only memorized, it must be sealed within your very soul, the king said gravely. They sat on the floor in the center of the small ancient room and there T’eir instructed Halden over and over, from mind to mind. Time and again the king gestured at each small dot which followed the other all along the length and breadth of the large map of the Valley. The art work was exquisite in every fine detail and after a while of this continuous teaching and meditation, the map seemed to become detached from the wall and begin floating before Halden's entranced eyes. The lush river valley then seemed to take the boy into its vast wilderness and Halden knew a feeling of flying freely through each and every cleft and rill and up every towering cliff, then down again and again. Halden breathed calmly and deeply as the beloved River Valley of his people flashed below his wondering eyes. Would there have been a wind, he'd have thought himself to be a Dragonfly soaring higher and higher, seeing every single windswept tower which the River Styx had carved out from age to age as it grumbled down from the Tharsis uplands farther to the west. Of course, there were hundreds of villages with their own Royal Palaces. Seen from such a great height, they all took on the appearance of little dots as the tower of each Palace rose up majestically from its

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footing on the valley floor. ((There, the Cly Royals)), said his father's voice in Halden's mind, ((there, the Tils Royals...yonder the Hok Royals)). On and on the young prince flashed back and forth over the Map and each mile and every palace on the map was impressed forever into his subconscious and his very soul. Although Halden felt he was soaring through thousands of miles within the map, he did not tire because his mind was totally alive and absorbed in each wondrous moment of discovery. The Martian boy had no sense of the passage of time for he was at once enthralled and captured by his spirit journey through the ancient map on the wall. It is said that an entire lifetime can be lived in only a few moments of greatest pleasure or excitement, for those are the moments in one's life which are of utmost importance; so it was with Halden. He had such a delicious feeling of joy as every detail, every peak and valley and every exotic palace in his valley was ingrained into every fiber of his being. In the process of being so fully immersed in the map for those long minutes, all the priceless gems of knowledge of the Valley became a part of Halden's identity and lineage. Thus he would never forget the precious secrets of his Homeworld and they would flow beyond him to his children and their children as well. After every fine detail and substance of the Valley had been saturated into the boy's mind and soul, he grew blissfully tired as though having finished a very strenuous yet important task that he could be forever proud of. His arms which had been spread out like wings throughout his long, exciting journey, drooped lazily and Halden slowly closed his eyes. The Valley below slowly blurred and receded farther and farther from him. The last sensation though was most curious because it was not a sight but a sound that he heard. It was a single high, clear musical note which he had heard only once before in his life. It was the sound that his Luss had made only moments after it was placed in his hands for the first time by its crafter. Every significant moment in Halden's life after that was marked by a song from his Luss. In that same fashion, the vision of the Map of the Royals in the Chamber of Knowledge was sealed within him forever.

Halden awoke from his quiet meditation still sitting beside his father, on the dusty chamber floor and he knew that a special gift had just been passed on to him. Something warm and glowing fell from his brow and into his waiting hand. The spell was nearly finished. His father's strong, guiding voice still echoed in him though as he continued reciting all the family names of the Royals who lived peacefully with them in the Styx River Valley. Halden looked up at his father and noticed contentment in him that he hadn't seen in months. His eyes were still closed in blissful meditation and a calm smile touched his lips.

    ((Thank you, father)), Halden whispered into the king's happy mind. T’eir lifted his head just a bit higher and prouder then turned and looked over at his son with that same Royal pride. It was a simple, piercing gaze which caused Halden's heart to skip a beat because he knew that his father was considering him more of a man now than a boy.

    When they were finished their meditations, T’eir and Halden stood up and the boy assumed that it was time to leave the Chamber of Knowledge. Although he could not see the outside world above them, Halden was very hungry and so he figured that dinner time was not far off.

As he turned to leave however, he realized that he was now facing the fourth and last wall of the chamber. He did not notice it before because it was the wall that they had passed through when they first walked into the chamber, entering under a low archway. His father's strong, heavy hand came down on his shoulder to stop him from leaving. The king and his son stood together now, facing the fourth wall which was divided in two by the low, narrow archway.

    ((We cannot yet leave, Halden)), the king telepathed, ((there is a last wall to study, and it is also the most difficult of all.)) Halden looked on this final, wall which held the last two engraved pictographs on either side of the crumbling archway. The left half of the divided wall was engraved with a picture that stood out from the others in the room in the harshest manner. It was an image which was created with crudely drawn scrapes and scratches over the dust sandstone wall. Indeed, the scratch marks were so numerous as to make the whole picture, and the people drawn in it, very difficult to see. Halden got the impression that the artist who etched this corner of the Chamber of Knowledge was a person torn between two very strong emotions. One was the strong desire, perhaps even a feeling of obligation to record that moment in time, while the second of the two emotions was one of sadness and shame - perhaps even anger. The picture was simple and brutal. In the upper left corner was drawn a sphere with rays emanating from it like the sun and there were two parallel lines which slanted down till they touched the ground, like a ramp of some sort. A line of people could then be seen walking from the sphere and down the ramp toward the middle of the picture to meet a second of line of people coming from the right. But where the two groups met in the middle was where the shameful imagery was drawn. For there, the people from the left, who had no weapons at all were being beaten down and killed by the people on the right. Cutting down the middle, between the two groups were also two other curving lines which represented a river and, into that river, the peaceful beings fell or were thrown, one by one. The victims of this atrocity were strange looking beings who stood taller than their murderers and they looked to be covered with thick hair or fur from head to toe. Their killers however, were very easily recognized; they were Halden's own people, Martians, their distinctive hair-quills easily seen standing up straight from their heads. One Martian who was at the forefront of the attacking mob stood apart from his peers and was pictured delivering the first blow to one of the defenseless strangers. He was taller than the others and had a long beard falling down to his chest. In his hands he held a long staff which he used as a weapon to hit the first of the visitors. A word or name was scrawled above the line of people who were being killed. It was one that Halden had never known before: Nethlins. Halden suddenly was not feeling very proud of his own kind and when he looked at the second wall picture, on the right side of the archway, he felt an ominous sense of dread. For the picture was nearly a single wall of blackness, and near the bottom of the thick black shadow was a line of his people, fallen dead on the ground. Clearly, a great disaster had befallen his people and their Homeworld, and there appeared to be a direct connection between it and what they had done to the visitors. Yet just below the dead bodies could be seen four rectangular squares, and inside each square, Halden saw a Martian lying in a sleeping position - they were two adults and two children. This would all have been a most depressing end to the last picture but for one small ray of hope. At the bottom, right corner of the otherwise black picture there was a small triangle of white which represented that hope, and toward the white light walked the same four people after they had left the safety of the four square boxes which now stood empty. Halden tried to make sense out of the grim story that unfolded before his eyes. Finally, he could no longer bare the silence within the chamber and the four walls felt much too close and uncomfortable now.

    What is this, father - what does it all mean, he asked as he turned to gesture back at the other three walls, for there was some sort of connection between each of them, he was sure. There was an especially direct connection between the awful archway picture and the other, on the far, opposite wall which portrayed the shifting over of his Homeworld's orbit. T’eir, the king and loving father looked down at his son with caring yet sad eyes as he proceeded to explain the one terrible and barbaric instant in their race's history.

    They were called Nethlins, his father began, and they came from a great distance in their ship, long ago. The ship wandered near to our Homeworld and the Nethlin people wished only to begin relations with us. The king paused for a moment, then continued with a new heaviness in his voice. They came down to our world, requesting simply to be friends, looking for an honest answer from us - that was all. But we were a very different people then...a cunning people. And so, King T’eir told his son the tale of his people's first and only contact with an alien race of peaceful creatures. Above their heads, in the world above ground, urgent defences and preparations were being made for the imminent battle between their people and the war-machines which they had foolishly banished to fight their war several years before. The Martian people's age-old sense of superiority, their willingness to let machines settle their disputes for them on the two distant moons was coming back round to bite them hard. Too late they had fully realized just how overpowering their well-crafted and efficient robots had evolved to become. Now, the Martian civilization hung on the brink of ruin, if not complete extinction. Down below, in the quiet of the ancient Chamber of Knowledge though, the young Martian boy listened intently to the rest of the story of the Nethlins encounter that his father related to him. When the king was finished, he then showed Halden the fourth and last chamber below the palace. It was the Chamber of Everlasting and it was there that the boy saw four Death-Sleep Capsules which had been pictured in the wall etchings inside the Chamber of Knowledge. They were Time-Tombs, the King said, and strict rules among all the Royals in the Valley decreed that there could be only four of them for each Chamber of Everlasting. Two for the parents, two for the children - that was all, and each palace was allowed only one chamber. The Chamber of Knowledge acted as an educational tool for the Royals who survived the Death-Sleep and helped them regain the knowledge to restart their dormant civilization; ironically, that could only happen after yet another Great Change befell their world in another five thousand Mars-years.  When the whole story was told, Halden then fully understood the bitter cycle of destruction and rebirth that his race had to endure, as well as how the cycle began many ages ago. But the Martian boy also had an awakening of new thoughts and ideas because he realized that if he was successful in completing his Manhood Challenge then a new doorway of hope could be opened to all his people. For if he could survive the journey to the Blue Water-World and return to tell his people about it all, then perhaps there would be hope for an escape from the Great Change at last. If he, a mere boy could travel there then maybe the rest of his people could as well. Maybe.

    Halden thought hard about his mission long after he left the chambers beneath the throne room. He found himself thinking of the challenge with a much broader frame of mind. A successful outcome would mean that there could be a brighter future for everyone on Homeworld. If he could blaze a trail for them with this voyage, then more people could follow after him. Settlements could be erected year after year until eventually, a new Homeworld could be established on the Water-World. Most importantly, when the Nethlin ship returned and another disaster befell his world, his people would all be safely living on the other world instead. Could they survive though? What was the air like? How much warmer was it there? Those were only a few mysteries that Halden had to solve while he was on the alien world - if he made it there. His Manhood Challenge had suddenly taken on a far more vital significance than he could have imagined when he started it only a few months before. The strange glass coils were safely moved to the hidden workshop in the cave and Halden resumed his work, preparing for the important journey ahead of him. Weeks passed without further news of anymore attacks from the sky and for a brief period of time, there were some who dared to hope that the worst wounds that the enemy could inflict upon them had already occurred. Perhaps, that was all there was to be had from them - or maybe, by chance, the kill-signals that had been transmitted several years before, to the creatures on both moons, had finally taken effect and they were now all silent and dead. These were the false hopes of a quietly fearful people though because T’eir saw and recorded more and more pin-point lights ascending from each of the Martian moons every night as he gazed up through his Aetherglass. The bright, reflective points of light hung silently in perfect battalion formations in the cold space between the moons and Homeworld, waiting patiently while Spiders and Flies, by the thousands, fell into rank behind them. The machines were slowly building up their numbers to become an overwhelming invasion force. They planned to utterly annihilate the people of Mars with one surprise attack of terrible brute power. T’eir knew this event would happen very soon, as would another. He knew those omens with accurate certainty because he was the king of his Clan. As such, T’eir held the one key to a very special and secret gift.